Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society The Truth About Pablo Picasso About this episode Pablo Picasso's impact on the art world was sensational, but what impact did he have on the people around him?
His relationship history contains some problematic moments, to say the least, so we are asking if you can - or even if you should - separate the art from the artist.
Joining Kate today is author and Harvard professor, Suzanne Blier, to help us navigate this and find out more about Pablo Picasso.
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This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:35 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely Betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back once again to Betwixter Sheets. Well, fancy seeing you round these parts. How fabulous you've decided to drop by once again. But before we go any further together, I do have to tell you, and I will have to keep telling you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults, about adult things, and adult way, covering all subjects you should be an adult to, right? Let's get on with the show!
1:02 Kate Lister? It is 1937, Betwixters, and we are in gay Paris. That's right, Paris. I have managed to sneak into the back of Pablo Picasso's studio to see what he's working on. A giant canvas stretches across the wall, and he's called it Guernica. Horses scream, buildings burn, and with every brush stroke, Pablo Picasso has created what many will call the greatest anti-war painting ever made. And in the corner stands his mistress, Dora Ma, photographing it as it happens. She's his lover, his muse, and as some would argue, one of his many, many, many romantic casualties. Huh.
1:44 Kate Lister? Picasso could paint almost like nobody before or since, but he was also a bit of a prick. And that's putting it mildly. Can we admire the masterpiece and ignore the man holding the brush? Well, that's a question as old as time, but I'm ready to try and answer it if you are.
2:25 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. It's a question that's become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Can you separate the art from the artist? Picasso is one such artist who this question is rightly squared at. Yes, his work was remarkable. It absolutely was. But as you'll hear, as a man, as a human, he was problematic, to say the very least. Some of the worst accusations levelled at Picasso include the alleged abuse of a 12 year old adopted daughter, as well as his relationship with a 17 year old Marie Thorez Walter when he was in his 40s.
3:09 Kate Lister? These instances highlight why it's so important to reappraise someone like Picasso, who is constantly lauded. Helping us navigate and understand all of this complexity is the author and Harvard professor Suzanne Blier. Easels at the ready, everybody. Let's do this.
3:33 Kate Lister? Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Professor Suzanne Blier. How are you doing?
3:40 Speaker 01 I'm doing very well. It's wonderful to be here and lovely to meet you.
3:44 Kate Lister? It's so nice to meet you and I can't believe that the podcast has been going for three years and we haven't done an episode on Pablo Picasso yet. We've been saving him up.
3:57 Kate Lister? Now, you are Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, no less, and you have written on Picasso. So before we get into the nitty gritty, can I ask you, what was your origin story with Picasso? Do you remember when you first even encountered him, even before your academic career?
4:16 Speaker 01 Well, I had gone, I don't know the beginning, the beginning, but I went to graduate school at Columbia University in New York City and Picasso, of course, was at the Museum of Modern Art there and was a beacon, basically, for so many people. And some of the best-known art historians have addressed his work, Leo Steinberg and others, and I was well familiar with them. And he's always been fascinating and always complex. And both he and his works make a point to always transcend and complicate anything one wants to address with respect to those works or with respect to the artist, an incredibly brilliant and transformative
5:01 Speaker 01 and indeed complex person.
5:04 Kate Lister? I love the complex. Yes, we're going to be getting into the, into what complex actually means. But before we get into Picasso, the man, and we're going to be talking about his artwork all the way through this, but I don't think that we can dispute his artistic genius, can we? I mean, he was, he was a big deal. He changed things, didn't he?
5:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, an enormous big deal. And I think, to some extent, his brilliance and innovations in the history of art have shielded us from some of his other extraordinary aspects of his life. Here, we're going to be talking about sex and related considerations, but he was, he was brilliant financially, economically. I mean, he was able to create a milieu in which even during, you know, the First and Second World Wars, he was in Paris and was
6:05 Speaker 01 able to really transcend a very difficult market. And to this day, his works have benefited from the, what he put in place, basically, even at that early period.
6:18 Kate Lister? And his work sells for hundreds of millions of pounds now, doesn't it?
6:23 Speaker 01 Even a print, absolutely.
6:26 Speaker 01 I think the other thing that that is important about him, he benefited enormously from the friendships he had with both men and women. And they really were a central part of his oeuvre. You know, he was very much an interior person, but he was also very much an exterior person, intellectually and in in many other ways, a very, very funny man. And I mean, that in the sense of having an amazing sense of humor.
6:55 Kate Lister? I did not know that about him. So there's no disputing, the man is a genius. But let's try and get a little bit past that. Can you tell me, what was his origin story even? Where was he born? Where did he come from? Who was his family?
7:09 Speaker 01 So he's Spanish. He was born in Malaga, which is a coastal city, very close to Africa. And in many respects, of course, during a key part of Spanish history, it was part of the broader African diaspora with a number of people from North Africa and Southern Africa there. So he grew up in very much an international setting. And he had a grandfather, the Spanish, of course, were a major, a major empire. And he had a grandfather who lived in Cuba. And at a certain point in his life, he learned that he had Spanish cousins in Cuba who were of African descent.
7:49 Speaker 01 And so his relationship with Africa and his relationship with the broader diaspora in which his family and in which the world in which he lived was placed is important. And of course, then he he moves from Malaga with his family to Barcelona. And then he makes his way to Paris in 1900. He has, he's one incredibly fortunate, very young age, had one of his works selected for the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition. So he finds himself in Paris at that time with a lot of the African and colonial and other representations at that fair. And so he's he's got an eye that is taking in everything.
8:34 Speaker 01 And that's that's one of the others. Staggering things about his work is that he is literally looking at everything and and taking it in kind of. Uh, I'm not sure how one would compare it today, maybe like A I, like everything that comes in. And he is processing and transforming in a certain way. And that includes books, it includes, you know, medieval sculpture on the streets of Paris. He's just, it includes plaster casts that are at that point in time in the Trocadéro Museum. From from early France, African and oceanic works from elsewhere. He's he's just absorbing and transforming.
9:12 Kate Lister? What was his relationship with his mother and father like? Before he's gone to Paris and he's, and we'll talk about the the Paris that he was absorbing all of this culture in. But did he have a happy childhood, a happy home life?
9:26 Speaker 01 Very, very much. I mean, his mother was incredibly supportive. His father was an artist and also was supportive. And I think from a very young age, uh, he was, and till a very old age, very, very competitive. And even at that young age, he was, he was creating works that were far beyond his age potential. And he was nurtured in that. Uh, and I think the saddest part of his life, uh, in many respects, and one of the most transformative, happened, uh, when he was young. His then seven year old sister Conchita, um, contracted diphtheria. And he made a vow, uh, if she would live, that he would give up painting.
10:11 Speaker 01 And she died. And so I think that complication, that tragedy, that loss for him, was something that pervaded his idea about creativity, about his own success. Could he succeed if somebody else had failed? About children, about motherhood, about death. That was all co-mingled with that very sad moment in in his early life when his love sister had died.
10:43 Kate Lister? Was he ever trained in art? Did he ever get a classical art education or was he a self-taught?
10:50 Speaker 01 Several things simultaneously. Certainly he learned from his father, he was self-taught. And in Barcelona, he actually did attend classes as well.
10:57 Kate Lister? Did he attend classes well?
11:00 Speaker 01 I'm assuming that's a yes and no question simultaneously.
11:03 Kate Lister? Okay, because I read that he did win a place at prestigious art school in Madrid, but he got quite bored of it quite quickly.
11:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, and he was learning so much else, you know, around in the various cafes. But also, this was a time in Spain of enormous art and architectural
11:23 Kate Lister? Yeah.
11:23 Speaker 01 richness. And so he had friends who were welders. So he was getting to know the world of sculpture and architecture and the kind of limitlessness of what he could envision even in the future as an artist. I mean, he never stuck to one medium. He would, he would constantly explore others. And that, I think, was, was very important for, for his work and what he was able to do as well.
11:52 Kate Lister? In these early days, when he's in, he's in Madrid and he's in Paris and he's a young man. And what a time to be in Europe, when all of these intellectual movements are kicking off. Sort of the pre-war, post-war period. Was his art celebrated? Because I just sort of have this, because his work was so radically different from what had gone before. Was it well received? Or did people look at it and just think, what on earth is this guy doing?
12:21 Speaker 01 Well, he made a really radical transformation in 1906, 1907. And before then, he was really working for patrons. So it was quite well received. And he had a number of dealers who were acquiring his work. He was in the, the limelight of Gertrude Stein early on in Paris. And she was transformative and her brother Leo and she made a large difference. But his, his works were being sold and they were being recognized. As there always was competition from some of the other artists of his period. Matisse and he had a frenemy game going on that, that was, was really interesting.
13:06 Speaker 01 But yes, I think it was an enormous disappointment for him that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, his famous March 1907, was not purchased by Gertrude Stein. In my estimate. It was simply too large. It filled one whole wall of his studio apartment. And there was no way she could have brought that into her salon where she had others of his works hung. But that work, still to this day, is the subject of fabulous controversy.
13:40 Kate Lister? It's an extraordinary painting.
13:43 Speaker 01 It is. Absolutely extraordinary. And you can stand in front of it for hours and see new things in it. And I think that that was one of the things that was most significant for me in discovering his sources for this painting, some of them. I was able to actually see that painting in an entirely new light. And I think one that's far closer to what he was thinking about at the time when he was painting it and why it was so transformative for him. And why it's, one of its early names had the name Philosophy in it, because for him, it was in large measure about a critically complex intellectual question.
14:26 Speaker 01 The origins of humankind, the role of women in the story of evolution and how we have
14:34 Speaker 01 cultures, races in different parts of the world with mothers, and yet we're all part of the human race. And that was something fascinating to perceive at the period. And I think a canvas of that size, which would have been very expensive. He chose specifically because this was not a brothel, a simple brothel. He could do that on a sheet of paper or a small canvas. No, this was something much bigger, much more important.
15:01 Kate Lister? I have heard people say that that image is, it's a brothel scene and that it's the women that work there staring out at the client. And I guess that gives it one particular lens, but I've just got it up in front of me as I'm talking to you. And it's Now that you've mentioned that it's different races of different women, that seems incredibly striking to me. That's how you read it.
15:22 Speaker 01 Oh, absolutely. And as you're looking at it, on the left, you've got a woman in profile with a gypsy garb, and she's walking kind of in Egyptian walk across the canvas.
15:33 Kate Lister? Yes.
15:34 Speaker 01 How many women in Egyptian garb? I mean, I have not been to a brothel, but does one imagine, you know, walking horizontally in front of John's? It's not your immediate read of a brothel situation. And then you've got that fabulous woman in the corner, the lower corner staring out at us with a blue eye and a brown eye, and her body really distorted. She's kind of crouching, you know, kind of even in a giving birth kind of posture.
16:02 Kate Lister? Yes.
16:02 Speaker 01 Looking out. And that resonates with a fascinating figure for him among women, which is the sorcerer Celestina, the old woman with one eye who can read, can see things in the world that the rest of us can't see. And in a certain sense, I think an artist, and in this case Picasso, probably saw himself, imagined himself in a way kind of like Celestina, the sorcerer poking things in and transforming things. And also like a mother giving birth. He is indeed resonating with that larger idea of transforming. And he very much wanted to do this.
16:45 Speaker 01 The whole history of art in Europe. And he was on a mission. And not easy for a man from Malaga, Spain, arriving in Paris as an outsider and with a thick accent and with not much money in his pocket, unlike, you know, other artists like Matisse, to have that as a goal and to achieve that so young is really remarkable.
17:24 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Suzanne and Pablo after this short break.
17:31 Kate Lister? Hello, betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
18:14 Kate Lister? Looking at this painting, I think it offers us a nice segue into Picasso's relationship with women. Because looking at this, there's so much beauty here and there seems to be respect. And he's clearly a man that is fascinated with the female form and with motherhood and reproduction. And sort of listening to all the things that you're saying is that he was smart and inventive and funny and an entrepreneur. And so far, he sounds absolutely charming, Suzanne. He sounds like the kind of person you'd definitely want to date. But I've been led to believe that his relationship with women was not all that great.
18:53 Speaker 01 He was one of these serial relationship guys. And but before you move your eyes from that painting for a moment, and this directly relates to that. Look at, look at the setting, look at what is around them and where, where are you? Where did he situate them? Where are we looking at? We're looking at either a cave, you know, kind of like a primordial cave, or we're looking at a vagina. And looking at a scene of women with vaginal lips, which are in the surrounding area. And so
19:25 Kate Lister? Yeah, I can see that.
19:27 Speaker 01 Now, when we're talking about women and his relationship with them, it's so complex in so many ways. And he's seeing things again. As, I mean, it makes perfect sense. A vagina is a cave, you know, a womb, et cetera. It all kind of fits together, but there's not very many people who would, who would see it in the same way and put that as the perimeter, the, the boundary of a large camp.
19:54 Speaker 01 But now we can jump into the women because that's a, that is an important part of his story.
19:59 Kate Lister? He had a lot of women, he had a lot of relationships. He doesn't seem to have been faithful in any of them, and there seems to be quite a lot of heartbreak here. There's this, seems to be this pattern of women that, that become very, very attached and then, and then it kind of goes wrong and then, then there's psychological breakdowns. But can you, can you just sort of take us through it almost chronologically? Like, who is the first big love of his life? Young Picasso, who was he in a relationship with?
20:26 Speaker 01 I think the most important, and probably one of the most important for a long period of time, even after they split, was Fernand Olivier. A very tall woman with beautiful red hair.
20:36 Kate Lister? Oh, tall. Oh, that's interesting.
20:38 Speaker 01 He was short, but she, she was, she was tall.
20:41 Kate Lister? He was five four, wasn't he?
20:43 Speaker 01 About that, yeah. And she, she was tall, she was beautiful, but, but a, a large woman, right? And, and towering and this amazing head of hair, red hair. She had an enormous wit. She had, she'd been a model. And that's where a lot of men, artists, found their relationship. She had been a model, she had, had sexual relations for hire. She had enormous wit. She's super smart, really an intellectual. And when he is painting his famous portrait of Gertrude Stein and calling her back to sit for him for days and months, et cetera,
21:25 Speaker 01 Fernand would regale Gertrude Stein with these various stories and the fables, French fables, et cetera. And I'm sure he took all of that in. He, he loved smart people. And I think his best artworks, his best art periods are when he's around both men and women who are super smart. But this is also a time when they're they're living in the Bateau Lavoire, which is in Montmartre on a on a hill. It's a small studio, lots of other artist studios, lot of noise. He just wants to work and and she's pretty demanding, you know, and they don't have much money. Occasionally, they would go out to this, the La Pain Agile,
22:10 Speaker 01 where they would get some dinner, but they went for a fair amount of time without food and she was probably very demanding. She wanted his attention and there are times when this was really cruel, but he would lock her in and say, you know, kind of leave me alone. And so you get that there's a jealousy aspect of it and of Picasso. And and I think that comes to the foreground with her. There's a really important period in their life, which begins in April or May of nineteen oh six and continues till about April nineteen oh seven, when one of his dealers offers to buy all of his artwork
22:56 Speaker 01 and gives him an enormous amount of money for it and enough money so that they could live, pay rent, have food for over well over a year without having to sell any of his works. In other words, without having to create works that he knew would meet the market needs of the time. And he took he did this. He basically stopped working for outside patrons and simply used that as a period of exploration, looking at books and other things. And so that that gets in kind of with the relationship with Fernand. And the summer of nineteen oh sixty, the two of them go back to Spain. He's discovering books and she no longer becomes his model because he's taking his models from books.
23:41 Speaker 01 So that whole model artist relationship is really changing. And I think that's a factor as well. An artist controls a model, sit, stand, even in the cold, whatever. And when he's not using models, he's more into his own ideas.
24:00 Kate Lister? She couldn't have children of her own, could she, Fernand? And that was an obsession for Picasso. Didn't they adopt a child at one point?
24:09 Speaker 01 They, yeah, that, boy, what a tragedy, yeah. They couldn't have children of her own. They adopt a child, an older child, and then they return that child to the orphanage. And, yeah, it's really cruel.
24:26 Kate Lister? Why did they do that? They adopt, she's a little girl, she's about 12, I think. And then they have to return her. Why did they do that?
24:33 Speaker 01 Well, the story is that he had his eyes on her. And it kind of makes sense. She's coming from an orphanage. I can't imagine that life is pleasant. And there's lots of things happening, as we know, in those orphanages. So, yes, that is absolutely the case. And I do think his relationship with his lovers having children is a complex one. I think that he, there was a fear there, that somehow, could he succeed in being a fertile man and having children of his own and being successful as a fertile artist? So there was a, there was a push and pull there, I think, that was not there later in his life,
25:18 Speaker 01 but I think early on, that was one of those things that challenged him. You know, from Malaga, there's a fair amount of African culture in the way he's seeing the world, a certain amount of belief in magic and sorcery. He was very careful with anybody who would wear a sweater of his, for example, or what he would do with hair that was cut. I think that there was that kind of fear about what might happen that went along with that. But that's outside of the, I think, the child that they had adopted.
25:55 Kate Lister? So Fernand, Olivia, do they kind of drift apart? Or is there a sort of a big reckoning between the two of them? Because they don't stay together.
26:05 Speaker 01 No, there is a big reckoning. I think that she is wanting to move. I think there's an issue with money, but I also think there's an issue with relationships. He's constantly looking around and it's not just and taking and not that framing does not just mean sex per se. Before we leave Les Demoiselles completely, there's a really important photograph that he took of the painting in his studio. And he was a photographer and he's taking it sort of low to the ground and looking up at it, probably sort of lying on his chest. And before he takes it, he's placed in front of it, a chair and has invited
26:48 Speaker 01 in the wife of another artist in his studio, Kies Van Dagen. So his wife is holding her child and that is positioned right in front of the painting. And it was one of the ways that that I could date the painting because they're wearing dark clothing that you would wear before Easter. But the the interesting aspect of this story here is taking a photograph of another man's woman, or painting another man's woman, or drawing another man's woman is a, in a certain sense, a taking in his view. So there's constantly that roving eye, that engagement, that is a sort of part of it. And around the time that Picasso and
27:32 Speaker 01 Fernando splitting up, he really has a relationship with the real love of his life, Eva Gude, who dies in 1911. And they are together for about three or four years and she dies of cancer. We don't hear that much about that relationship, but I think that that did have a significant impact on his life.
27:54 Kate Lister? Who did he marry? Because he married twice, didn't he? Who was his first wife?
28:00 Speaker 01 Is that Olga?
28:01 Kate Lister? Oh, was it Olga? Yes. Yeah, I think so.
28:04 Speaker 01 And many of the women he was with, and he refused the divorce because that, of course, you know, as a wizard, would mean that he would lose half the property. And so that was not going to happen. But each of the women were very different. And she was really fascinated from the vantage point. She also was an artist. He did support and love that in various people and
28:30 Speaker 01 She was beautiful. She was a ballet dancer and, you know, it was another piece of his life. Each of these women is bringing something different and he's looking at them and looking at his own work in slightly different ways during the course of these relationships. And I would imagine that even his sexual relationships with these women are changing based on where he is in his life and where they are in his relationships with them.
28:57 Kate Lister? He has children with Olga, doesn't he? And it does seem to be, again, like that jealousy comes through, that that's described, that he can be quite a controlling man with his relationships as well.
29:11 Speaker 01 Very, very controlling. On the one hand, incredibly charismatic, as you pointed out earlier, right? He's just profoundly interesting and would draw people in and his eyes and his wit and his smile, et cetera. And at the same time, incredibly controlling. It's this paradoxical nature of who he is as an individual as much as who he is as an artist.
29:38 Kate Lister? Is it true that he said there are two types of women, goddesses and doormats? Or is that quote disputed?
29:44 Speaker 01 It's certainly disputed. He could well have said it, but he also lies. He lies a lot and with a wit, you know, a twinkle in his eye, kind of. But, you know, he said, what is African art? I've never heard of it. Right? Come on. Of course he did. He knew it well.
30:00 Kate Lister? Pablo Picasso.
30:03 Speaker 01 But, you know, then you bring in, well, some of the most important women in his life, you know, Gertrude Stein. Where does she fit in this, right? Intellectual, a patron, a fabulous artist in her own means, who, although she's dealing with literary arts, was probably transformative for him. And then he was dealing with a number of others as well. So I think it was more to do with the fact that women...
30:33 Speaker 01 In his view, played different roles in his life at different periods of time. And I think early on, he really needed time. He wanted, you know, he was learning the craft of transforming the history of art. And he was really studying on his own, all of these books, notebook after notebook after notebook, filled with various pages. And then he also spent a lot of time with his male friends. So I, I think it was always complex around these relationships. And this aspect of control and this aspect of what he really wanted to do at a particular moment in time.
31:10 Kate Lister? Could he be violent in his relationships? Is there evidence of that, that he was physically violent with some of the women in his life?
31:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that locking Fernando Olivier in the house is pretty violent. And yes, I think he could be. I don't know in every context about how that was being framed, but I do know that there were many ways in which artists were violent in different ways. He was very close to Matisse. And Matisse had his models sit still for 45 minutes, an hour without moving and, and would capture them at that moment of pain when they couldn't stand it anymore, which to my mind is cruel. We can talk about cruelty and violence.
31:58 Kate Lister? Wow.
31:59 Speaker 01 And the photographer Elizabeth Cameron would sometimes do the same thing. And, and so there's, there's some violence, there's cruelty, there's selfishness, there's self-absorption. You know, you're in a relationship and come on, you've got to give back some at various moments. And he was very much into what he wanted to do. And that I think was an important piece of it.
32:34 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Suzanne and Pablo after this short break.
32:42 Kate Lister? Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there, and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
33:24 Kate Lister? His marriage to Olga, it doesn't, it doesn't end well because as you said, he refused to divorce her because under French law, she would have got half of everything that he had. And by that time, it was quite a lot. But she is one of several women involved with him that ends up having something akin to some kind of mental breakdown, right? And she, yeah, and she, she, she ends up, I don't want to say stalker, but it's not far off. Like she follows him around Europe and then when he's in new relationships, she's like turning up at the house and like, it's not a good picture this.
33:55 Speaker 01 No, I think he must be one of those people so much larger than life that you can't, if you're in a relationship with it, you just miss the, the brilliance, the light of those eyes of that persona. And she also is sort of missing that world. And, you know, there are two of his, the women in which he had relationships that commit suicide, including, you know, his last. And, and I think that there is that. So we were just talking before about his cruelty and his control. And I don't think that necessarily that speaks less of the women that they get absorbed by this and have a very hard time giving that up.
34:39 Speaker 01 I think that that must be the nature of somebody who is very much the center of the world, kind of like an Atlas-like figure that is absolutely absorbing. That certainly is a piece of it. Although, you know, I think what I'm really loving about the questions that you're asking is you're giving a three dimensionality, a four dimensionality to this amazing artist. And far too often, he becomes a subject of derision, like, like everything is bad. And so don't look at his work because, you know, blind by this or that one aspect of what was happening in his life. And, and he was so much richer and so much more complicated.
35:19 Kate Lister? Suppose the, the question that we have to get to grips with is, is that can you separate the art from the artist and should you? Like, can we accept these extraordinary artworks, but also accept that the man was doing them could be very cruel and abusive? One of the people that he was definitely serially unfaithful to with, with Olga, although maybe Olga was out of the picture by this point, but it's Maria Therese Walter. Is that right? And she was another one who was, she was young when this was happening.
35:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, she was seventeen at the time. And I think she represented for him youth and
36:00 Speaker 01 that kind of eternal beauty. And, and even when he is painting her, it's always with the bangs and the ponytail. And, um, yeah, I mean, that, that was way too young. And in a certain sense, she was an anomaly. You know, many of the other women were, she, she was certainly engaged with art in her own way, but I think it was that youth that he was just thinking he had lost in some way. And she remained deeply in love with him in a, in a way. And very complex part of his life, for sure.
36:41 Kate Lister? He does seem to have a history of being attracted to underage girls, doesn't he?
36:47 Speaker 01 They were generally younger than him. I'm not sure what the age. I think Fernand was a little bit older, but she was by far the youth, the one that, for various reasons, was problematic and very much remained so.
37:06 Kate Lister? How do we, how do you approach this then? Because it's a very, like, the art itself is extraordinary, but the man behind it, as you've pointed out very eloquently, could be highly problematic. How do we deal with that as critics and scholars and just people that appreciate art? Can we separate the art from the artist? Would Picasso even want us to do that?
37:32 Speaker 01 I think Picasso would want us to look at the complexity, and that would be his relationships with everyone. And certainly the women, but each of those women, I mean, he was very supportive of the artistic careers of Dora Mar, for example, and the others. And also, he appreciated the intellectual and the support that they would provide him. I mean, he learned from them. He engaged with them in various ways. So as I'm evaluating people, I tend to look at what they have done, what they've achieved, what are some of the complexities around this, and what this can offer us in terms of insight into
38:15 Speaker 01 him and his works. There are some people who, even artists, who have been far more complicated in a way, sort of a difficult relationship, or a series of them. And, you know, there are men who steal from women, you know, ideas and don't give credit. There are women, I'm sure, who do that with men as well. And I think I'm more of a person who looks at the total framing of how we can understand an individual and their contributions to society more generally. And, you know, let's put in place here what's happening a little
38:56 Speaker 01 later in Spain with fascism. And the fact that later on in his life, I mean, he really focuses on that and brings Guernica to the United States to raise funds, and has it travel to raise money to support the movement against fascism.
39:13 Speaker 01 Later and through his life, he's supporting on the one hand, the communist newspaper. On the other hand, supporting in his own lifestyle, what's happening in the south of France and and living an incredibly elegant life of somebody of enormous wealth.
39:30 Kate Lister? Yeah, of course.
39:31 Speaker 01 In his mind, it fits, it works. It's how one deals with, you know, how complex a world we're actually living in.
39:40 Kate Lister? He wasn't that supportive of the career of François Gilot, if memory serves. That one might be an outlier. She said that he blacklisted her because they broke up. Is that correct?
39:52 Speaker 01 Well, yes, she had wanted, but again, there's a time when they're in a relationship. I think he is supportive and then.
39:59 Kate Lister? I see. See, but it's that thing again, isn't it? It's like when his focus is on you and when when he's like locked in on you, it's like the world couldn't be better. It's sunshine and shiny, but then very quickly that focus moves and then suddenly you're left just craving it and you want it again and again and again. And I guess unfortunately that that's the pattern of a lot of abusive relationships is people are craving what it was when it was at what they think of as their best.
40:28 Speaker 01 And some of them, this included Fernand, but also others, is, you know, trying to benefit from that by writing. And he was very controlling of what his former woman would be able to write. And one of her major books only came out at the time of his death. So you've got that aspect too that he is considering because for him, his reputation really as an artist was at the center of so much of what he felt he needed to be able to have some control over.
41:02 Kate Lister? Was any of this known at the time? I mean, did he do a good job of marketing his public image? Because it sort of feels like, like when I was growing up, certainly when I was a younger woman, is I didn't know any of this stuff about Picasso. I guess, I guess, why, why would I? But was this something that was known in his lifetime that he was not, very politely put as the not, not the best boyfriend?
41:22 Speaker 01 It must have been the case. I mean, I I'm thinking about his his younger period when he was engaging with other women, I you know, to what about flirting, right? And and doing that kind of work. So it must have been known to his friends that this was indeed happening. In a way, he remained far more loyal to his male friends. And I think I'd mentioned that, you know, the loss of his female love of his life, I would say the male love of his life was Guillaume Polinair, who was a brilliant man and was writing on and they were looking together at some of the issues around the Marquis de Sade. And Apollinaire was a wonderful artist, an intellectual in his own right. And he would
42:07 Speaker 01 die of conditions that related to his role in the First World War, right? He was injured and and then would die soon after. But Picasso remained very loyal, very supportive of men who played an important role in his life. And he also, I think, you know, as I'm looking at his at his work and what what elements one can take to read about it that are more germane to his own life, there's a well-known photographer named Brassai, who has published photographs of Picasso and his works and has written about him. And he writes with clarity and straightforwardness. And in that, you get a sense, ah, this is what life with
42:52 Speaker 01 Picasso was like, like, don't move my slippers, they're there for a reason. Don't bother me while I'm working, you know, books piled high, books of his own, you know, his own books from all over the place. And I think that that there's no, there's no evidence that he had relationships with men per se, other than the intellectual and the camaraderie and the philosophy and the drinking, etc. But that that's also a piece of, I think, what's happening.
43:23 Kate Lister? So the final question, then, just sort of leading on from what you're saying there, it's a big one. But do you think Picasso liked women? And I know that he thought that they were beautiful. I know that he liked having sex with them and lots of them. And I know he liked painting them. But just what you're saying there, that some of his most nurturing relationships were with men, and it was with men, I suppose, I'd say, does he respect women? That's probably a better question.
43:47 Speaker 01 I think some women he respected enormously. I think early on, I mean, Dora Mar and he were comrades in arms. They were working together. You know, this is the period of the 1930s surrealism. She really, she transformed his work at that time. I think his relationship with Gertrude Stein was impressive and powerful and important. You know, and I think the fact that she was a woman, but also gay and powerful and big and in very different ways and had the money and American. I think he, he liked women and men, individuals.
44:27 Speaker 01 I'll just remove the gender aspects, but like him who were outsiders that were not part of the norm. Oga was, was Russian and, and I think he did like that outsider nature. And a number of the men in his life, Paulineer or Oude, were also in some ways outside of this very elite Parisian culture. That offered him a way of seeing the world that was not so strictly defined by, well, this is the academy in, in France. This, this is, these are the standards that if I were a Frenchman, I would have to live up to because he, he was not going to do that.
45:09 Speaker 01 He was gonna break all of those standards and create a world in which he would be at the center.
45:16 Kate Lister? Do you think that we can reappraise Picasso's work for 2026 and our own social mores and our own norms? Do you think that that's even possible or is he just of his time?
45:28 Speaker 01 I would hate to compare anything to 2026 in terms of social or sexual mores and what's happening in, you know, here at home. You know, I, I don't, I really don't know how to answer that. But I do think that in time. I think we will begin to look at him in a much more complex way.
45:48 Kate Lister? Yeah.
45:48 Speaker 01 And I know that there were a number of fabulous artists who refused to really engage in Picasso until after his death. I think that he held that lock on what one could do as an artist. And then afterwards, you get some really brilliant work that's coming at this from Lucian Freud and others is coming at his work in a very new and really interesting way. And even African artists are coming back and redressing some of this in profoundly interesting ways. So I think that is also how we can begin to think about his relationships with women in a way that take them apart individually, see what each of these women is offering to
46:28 Speaker 01 Picasso, what he's offering in turn, and then realize, yeah, there was some pretty crude and cruel and jealous and dysfunctional aspects of that as well.
46:41 Kate Lister? Suzanne, you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Are you on social media at all?
46:50 Speaker 01 I'm a bit on social media, Instagram, Facebook. I have a website and I'm going to urge people to read Picasso's Demoiselle. I made it as a fun read. I decided I was going to do it as a journey of discovery, as if I were, which I was, on the track of trying to understand Picasso, walking in his footsteps and research. But there's no single dimensionality to this from the vantage point of a discipline. It's anthropology, it's religion, it's culture, it's history. They're all together. And in a certain sense, I think that's what makes this particular book such a fun read.
47:32 Kate Lister? Thank you so much for coming by to tell us about this very complex man.
47:36 Speaker 01 Thank you so much, Kate.
47:41 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Suzanne for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got episodes on how Catherine Howard was killed by the Tudor Court and one on the scandal of Queen Carolina Brunswick, all coming your way, so quite a lot of royal scandals. And if you wanted us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected] . This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorow and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt and Sheats, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
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